Anne Bishop Biography

Anne Bishop Born in 1950 Anne Bishop is an American fantasy author best known for her bestselling series The Black Jewels Trilogy. She has won only one award for her books. Her bestselling trilogy won the Crawford Award in 2000 and it is the series that made her name famous as soon as she published it. Bishop also created and published The Tir Alainn Trilogy and The Landscapes of Ephemera Series, two more successful series that she has added to her published collections. At the moment she is happily living in upstate New York and is working on her latest book Written In Red which will be available both in the USA & Canada.

The first volume of the trilogy that jumpstarted her writing career and which was her first novel of the Black Jewels universe entitled the Daughter of the Blood was published in March 1998 with the later sets, Heir to the Shadows and Queen of the Darkness each being published respectively in April 1999 and January 2000. A compilation for the entire trilogy was released in 2003 to celebrate the popular series.

In 2000 Bishop also released her first companion book for the Black Jewels series called The Invisible Ring. This book is a fan favorite due to it taking place prior to the entire trilogy itself. Readers were able to pick up the novel whenever they wished either before or after reading the entire trilogy, though Bishop highly recommended reading it after the series was read.

In 2005, Bishop then released the book of four short stories known as "Dreams Made Flesh." This collection of short stories allowed a reader to get a glimpse the amazing universe Bishop had created without really needing to even read the series itself even though the trilogy added to the individual short stories themselves and vice-versa. In 2008 Bishop published another stand-alone companion book called Tangled Webs.

In 2009, Bishop's book called The Shadow Queen was published and with the publication of this novel she did something much more different. Unlike her prior series, she wrote this book to be related to characters and events another of her stand-alone novels called The Invisible Ring. This new companion book also went along well with the events of the original trilogy. Bishop’s novel Shalador's Lady was released in early 2010. It is the sequel to The Shadow Queen. In March 2011 another of her published books Twilight's Dawn hit the shelves and became popular nearly overnight. This companion book contained four short stories that helped the reader to understand the different parts of the universe she had created in Shalador’s Lady. Bishop also published two short stories called “By the Time the Witchblood Blooms" and "The Price." They were originally published in March 2000 and October 2004.

Many of her Bishops novels are available internationally and can be purchased anywhere. Below is a list of her popular series:

The Black Jewels Trilogy: Follow Jaenelle, the most powerful Witch ever to be born as she takes her place as the Queen of Darkness and restores order to her realm. However it comes at a terrible price. Books: Daughter of the Blood Heir to the Shadows Queen of the Darkness

The protagonist is typically a naïve outsider who stumbles into the treacherous machinations of the political elite. Upon discovering a threat to the society he/she has pledged to uphold (whether ardently or reluctantly), the hero must take stock of their true character and push past boundaries to defeat those who would treat citizens as pawns in some evil game.

With all the back-room deals, public posturing, secret sins and who-knows-what-else we see in our own real-world politics every day, this sub-genre has a rich vein to mine while exploring what might happen in an entirely different world, given human nature and how it determines how any group of people will organize and interact.

Politics is often a heavy part of epic/high fantasy too, so you might classify many epic fantasy series as political fantasies too.